Help - advice sought on repairing hole made in neighbours ceiling

[nick]

We're doing a major rennovation of a large victorian property, and in the first mishap in a few months, last night a foot went through the neighbours ceiling. Luckily she wasn't in bed at the time; unluckily that part of the ceiling hadn't yet been cleaned of dust & debris and so that all ended up downstairs, although half an hour with Numatic Charles and the mess was pretty much gone.

The question now is how best to repair the hole satisfactorily and without too much expense, and advice from the group is most welcome here! Ideas that came to mind so far are:

1) squaring off the hole, putting new plasterboard for the hole, applying new skim and painting. Not sure if this is feasible/advisable.

2) fitting new plasterboard under the entire existing ceiling, skim and paint.

3) a suspended ceiling. We had already looked at various sound insulation options, and this may be an opportunity to deploy something, but cost is an issue and this was obviously an unexpected event.

Reading already, one post suggested that putting new plasterboard under the existing ceiling may not meet fire regs, although not all aspects of work on the property need to meet current regs due to its age, but I've not checked with our build control officer yet.

All advice and experience most welcome here.

Nick

[Mungo "two sheds" Toadfoot]

Depends what the existing finish is, to a degree. If it's just paint I would square off the hole, stick a larger piece over the hole in the loftspace, cut another piece to fit into the hole, from the neighbours room, obviously, and "glue" it to the hole-covering piece, make good with filler and paint.

I'd also bevel the edges of the cuts and the fill-in piece to reduce the possibility of it being easily visible.

Si

[Broadback]

I put my foot through my ceiling. :-(

A plasterer was coming shortly after to do another job. He simple removed the damaged plasterboard, cut back to beams, nailed a piece of plasterboard over the now enlarged hole and skimmed. As they say "You can't see the joins". Mind you his work is as near perfect as you could wish, his corners are to die for.

[Lobster]

The *neighbour's* ceiling? Is that next door, or downstairs?

That's the cheapest and simplest way - no reason why it shouldn't look as good as before if done properly. Is the existing ceiling plasterboard though, or lath-and-plaster (which makes it a bit more awkward)? You might want to check from above where the existing joints in the plasterboard are, and if close to the damaged area, you could pull the old stuff down as far as the old join (to avoid having two weak joins relatively close together).

Is the existing ceiling finish just flat, plain, painted?

Could do, but can't see any benefit over (1) - certainly a lot more expensive and slow. Would help sound insulation, if that's an issue as you mention below?

Need for sound insulation suggests a downstairs neighbour rather than next door? Can you clarify as it's very relevant!

Can't see how adding an extra layer of pboard can make the fire regs situation worse than it is. Yes there are standards, but they don't need to be applied retrospectively to an old property (even if you might want to do so for safety's sake).

If the neighbour is next door, that means you have adjoining roofspace, which is certainly a no-no these days from a Building Regs viewpoint (spread of fire); it also leaves your property vulnerable to burglary via next door and could do with sorting I would have thought.

David

[Magician]

Claim on the insurance? I've done the 'foot thru ceiling' trick twice and they paid out both times.

Dave

[bigcat]

If you want to improve sound insulation, easy way is to fit small dimenstion joists 2-3" below existing ceiling and fit new ceiling to that, so that floor and ceil are decoupled.

Otherwise just patch the hole with PB and fill, I'm not sure why one would need to do anything else.

NT

[Nick]

Many thanks to all for the quick and considered replies.

The neighbour is downstairs; a lady into her twilight years. It's a large detached victorian property. Downstairs is a small flat, split by our hallway that leads from the original front door to upstairs split over 3 levels.

The ceiling is plasterboard, and option 1 is what we're going for. The hole is "conveniently" placed between two joists, although we'll need to cut back to a third joist. The ceiling is painted without any special finish.

Right. She's mostly quiet, but your neighbours can change, and we're aware of how well sound travels between the floors. We're also having exposed floorboards, so no benefit of any absorption from carpet. The room is a bedroom below the main bedroom in ours.

I wasn't sure either, unless it was an issue if you didn't put the same thickness of plasterboard under the old ceiling, and so the bit under the hole being too thin.

This property is a big project, and the first place I bought. Putting your foot through a ceiling feels like a rite of passage, and actually one of the more trivial issues that we've had really. The property was in a dire state when I bought it, and needed more work than I imagined. Soiled throughout from several seemingly incontinent dogs. Heavy smokers and drinkers living there. Undeocrated, or cleaned it would seem, for decades. Literally every inch of wood has had to be stripped, most of the walls at least reskimmed, with some needing total replastering to replace blown plaster, ceilings replastered. Total rewire and computerised lighting fitted (my whim, not really a necessity exactly), new boiler and plumbing, 17 sash windows unjammed, removed, partly reglazed, puttied, resashed and with new window furniture. Floors stripped. New spindles fabricated by a wood turner to reinstate missing ones in part of the staircase. Some changes to internal layout. 70m2 of floor and wall tiles to be imported from Poland. New kitchen from arena kitchens (thanks to the group for that one)... The list seems endless.

Still flushing the old loo with a bucket at the moment, and there's a really bad smell from downstairs when the neighbour cooks fish for hours. (eewww!) We're using expanding foam to try and block up gaps to the side of the first set of stairs, but it's not completely cured yet (not pun intended!). Anyone any suggestions?

Another couple of months and the place may at least start to be habitable :)

Nick